“For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.” — 2 Corinthians 3:11
What is the “end” here in mind? This has to be in reference to the law of Moses (as a means of justification!), not the law itself. Am I correct in stating this?
I think the law ends, not as instruction, or its divine use to drive the sinner to Christ, but as a killing letter ministering death.
That has ended by a death, His death, of course, but also our death to the law as an accusing power, threatening the conscience with all the thunderclaps and black terrors of Sinai.
This ministration of death ends with the ministration of the Spirit of liberty!
Until the Spirit comes, until He is given on the sole basis of the gift of faith in Christ’s perfected obedience under the law offered up in His atoning death, we are dead in our sins. Regardless what admirable virtues or piety we may seem to have, we are yet in the flesh, and therefore alive to the law and dead to Christ.
This is the condition of every heart that has not been born again, Christian or Jew, that trusts in anything more or other than Christ’s righteousness and His finished work “ALONE”. To add anything of our own doing is to spoil, rob, and nullify the efficacy of Christ (whole letter to the Galatians).
Romans 7:4, 6
Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God … But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
Galatians 2:19
For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
Also, I do not favor any interpretation that leaves the impression that the OT saints were saved by the law and now that’s all done away as a means of salvation. The law was NEVER a means of salvation! Nor did it contribute towards salvation by any partial obedience to it.
Christ was always the only Savior, since it was impossible at anytime to know Yahweh (born by the Word, union with the divine nature, Spirit of Christ “IN them”, see 1Pet 1:23; 2Pet 1:4, 11) except by the quickening of the Spirit’s revelation of Him to the Word and Spirit-humbled heart. And this is as much true of the born again OT believer as the NT believer, since to know the Father “BY THE SPIRIT” was also to know the Son by the same Spirit because these are one. It is impossible to “know” (intimate experiential union) the one without knowing the other.
So when the spiritually alive OT saints knew God, they necessarily knew the Son (“kiss the Son” – David’s Lord) though not yet revealed in His humanity in history and the full revelation of the mystery of the gospel.
So we’re done with the law ONLY in the sense that we’re done with the flesh, since we now put no confidence in the flesh (human ability) to contribute anything to what Christ has finished once for all, and what the Spirit alone can quicken and reveal to the dead spirit of unregenerate man.
Our object now is to trust not in ourselves but in the God who raises the dead, which is impossible apart from the Spirit’s gift and power.
2 Corinthians 1:9
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:
That’s impossible for the flesh. Believe me, I’ve tried. 😊
Affectionately yours in the Beloved, Reggie
